For Marek and Teresa
"I was just thinking about you when you rang," is something that many of us experience - some of us more than others. Is this nothing more than coincidence? Or are some unseen forces at work...?
One person is in a room with an old-style fixed-line telephone. Sitting at home are four of their friends. The phone rings. It could be any one of the four. Before picking up the phone, the person in the room must say which of the four is calling. Mathematical probability would imply a 25% chance of being right. But what if the guess is right in 45% of cases? That was the outcome of a series of experiments into non-local consciousness by parapsychology researcher Rupert Sheldrake, over hundreds of iterations. A result greater than chance.
Here's another case. Can you tell whether a person is alive or dead by looking a their photograph? Dean Radin et al. conducted a study entitled Prediction of Mortality Based on Facial Characteristics in which participants were wired to EEG machines and shown standardised grey-scale photos of faces, half of which portrayed people that were alive, the other half of whom were dead. Again, the results were better than chance (53% vs 50%), with some participants scoring over 60%.
Personally, I don't believe that non-local consciousness allows itself to be detected by scientific method, as I wrote this summer. Yet without rigorous experiments and scrupulous analysis of results, how will science ever accept that unrelated events (knowing who the caller will be, telling from a photo if someone's alive or dead) are somehow connected, despite the absence of any causal link. Mainstream science is not particularly interested in even contemplating research in this field, fearing ridicule.
Nevertheless, I do believe that these effects exist - though they are weak and non-repeatable they are present. Our consciousness - mysterious, indefinable, knowable only to ourselves as a purely subjective experience - lies at the heart of parapsychology.
I wrote several years ago about monism and dualism, and again last year. Either the Universe is One - everything is in the domain of matter, energy and the laws of physics - or that body and soul are separate - with a material, observable world for one, and an invisible realm for the other. A growing number of spiritually inclined philosophers and scientists talk instead of 'nondualism' - ruling out an immaterial Kingdom of Heaven, seeing instead consciousness as an intrinsic property of the Universe, alongside mass and charge. Nondualism has its roots in Hinduism and Buddhism, stressing the unity of body and soul, rather than ruling out the latter as reductionist materialism does.
The eclipsing of classic Newtonian mechanics by quantum physics opened new perspectives for the spiritually inclined who seek to reconcile a spiritual outlook on life with science. Almost a century after the basics of quantum mechanics were calculated there's still not one generally accepted interpretation of what's going on at the subatomic level, and so the door to unorthodox thinking remains wide open.
Do we grasp gravity at the subatomic level? Do we believe in quantum gravity? Are we capable of understanding string theory? Can we observe any of these in action? In physics there are strong forces and weak forces - in the field of parapsychology, the effects are generally weak, yet are sufficiently present for people to notice them in their day-to-day lives. Some people have better-developed 'sixth sense' than the rest of the population; I would again draw upon The Curve to demonstrate what I mean...
This time last year:
Fenced in at last
This time four years ago:
Poznań's Old Market
Brexit, Trump and negative emotions
This time ten years ago:
Premier Tusk's second exposé
This time 11 years ago:
Into Poland's former Heart of Darkness
Commuter schadenfreude
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8 comments:
Question: How would you know that you are in the upper 2/3rds of your curve? What data would you have to support the placement of your ‘X’ on that curve?
Trying to quantify subjective parapsychological experiences, is a mugs game. Quantifying them at a population level doesn’t bear thinking about. Not sure how one could ever set up an experimental protocol to measure ephemeral experiences in a population.. Why bother? Just accept your personal paranormal experiences for what they are and take whatever meaning you want from them.
Sorry, the second comment is not Anonymous! It’s from me.
@ Teresa
Upper 2/3rds - it can slide, leftward or upward; generally the answer is not data, but subjective observation of other humans' behaviour and reasoning over more than 60 years; those who share a world view that's more to our existence than matter and materialism, those who don't shrug their shoulders at the Big Questions are rather rare, I'd say.
Your second question is a good answer to the first! The Curve is not an attempt to quantify, it is but an illustration. Setting up experimental protocol to measure ephemeral experiences for a population is what Dean Radin and Rupert Sheldrake do for a living. I believe attempts to pin down paranormal abilities (weak as they are!) with experiments causes them to evaporate in front of the very apparatus designed to measure them.
So, let’s say that by next week, you’ve decided to move your position upward on your exponential curve (why an ‘exponential’ curve, though?). You’ve had several more paranormal experiences, and you believe that you should rank yourself higher on the curve, moving into territory occupied by select people with an exquisite knowledge of these type of experiences. But what if ‘some’ people in that small, special cohort, have also recently experienced an increased number of paranormal happenings, which pushes ‘some’ of that that population further to the right, (but who knows how much further to the right?) Where is your place on the curve, now?
To me, (armed with a graduate degree in science),a graph in the form of an exponential curve is always a quantitive illustration of data points..
I’d be curious to know what criteria you use to identify the people on the portion of the curve, to the right of your ‘X’. Is it about people who are not materialistic and have had some paranormal experiences? What are the ‘Big Questions’ and must they always relate to paranormal experiences? What about people who ask the BIg Questions, but never have paranormal experiences, or believe in them?
@ Teresa:
"So, let’s say that by next week, you’ve decided to move your position upward on your exponential curve"
One doesn't decide, it's not something I'm aiming at in a time frame shorter than, say, a decade.
"You’ve had several more paranormal experiences, and you believe that you should rank yourself higher on the curve"
Not really - it's about quality of experience as well as quantity.
"...moving into territory occupied by select people with an exquisite knowledge of these type of experiences."
I don't see this as a zero-sum game - it's not a league table.
"But what if ‘some’ people in that small, special cohort, have also recently experienced an increased number of paranormal happenings, which pushes ‘some’ of that that population further to the right, (but who knows how much further to the right?) Where is your place on the curve, now?"
The entire curve rises. My place? Some people WAAAAY above me, many people to the left - "ludzie, którzy się nie zastanawiają". To the right - people with a better understanding. Big Question No. 1 = life after death. Not something that can be experimentally proven nor indeed disproved, an unfalsifiable assertion. Hence it is only through personal, subjective experience that the experiencer genuinely holds to be true, can one gain understanding.
Does your more than modest interest in life after death exist because you are afraid of death? Afraid that you will become nothing more than a pile of ashes upon your demise?
Is the hope that one lives on in some form after death simply a narcissistic desire?
I don’t believe in life after death. When I’m done, I’m done. The thought that my soul or my ethos may eventually re- circulate in another person brings me no solace.
When it’s time to exit this mortal coil, I won’t be begging for a presence in another life. I’m just not that precious.
"Does your more than modest interest in life after death exist because you are afraid of death?"
It exists because since early childhood I have had conscious experiences that tell of memories from without this lifetime. If you don't have these - I cannot in any way convince you of them, other that through my first-hand descriptions.
You may not believe in life after death - fine. Many don't.
My personal belief - and I shall repeat this - is that what remains is purest, subjective conscious experience, evanescent, with the ego stripped away from it. I am not the reincarnation - that very same person whose past-life impressions I have somehow been experiencing. These experiences - come in tiny snowflake-like doses - but big enough and often enough for me to recognise their consistency and familiarity over the decades.
For a Catholic who expects life after death in the form of bodily resurrection and a seat at the right hand of God for all eternity, the afterlife that I describe is too vague, too thin. And yet with me, it rings true.
I am not 'begging for a presence in another life'; I am not 'expressing a hope'. I am stating what I feel - from time to time, maybe no more than several times a week, ephemeral, fleeting, familiar - and happy - moments. I am growing in increasing certainty that this will repeat, with perhaps stronger, perhaps more frequent flashbacks to late 20th century London and early 21st century Warsaw. It won't be 'me', it will be a thread of consciousness, one that runs through me now back to the beginning to time and runs forward to end in universal unity - God as Purpose, God as Understanding.
Everyone who seeks God will find their own path.
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